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Tag: cyber attacks

I was at a conference today (September 28, 2018). I wanted to post something on Facebook. In my phone, I felt some kind of a lag when opening facebook app. Then FB app logged me out and asked me to log in .

Strange, I thought.

I typed my password and logged in. Then FB messenger asked me to do the same thing.

Weird, I thought.

Back home, I opened facebook on my laptop. FB logged me out and asked me to log in. Again.

More than 90 million Facebook users were forced to log out of their accounts early Friday, a common safety measure taken when accounts have been compromised.

Facebook said it did not know the origin or identity of the attackers, nor had it fully assessed the scope of the attack. The company said it was still in the beginning stages of its investigation.

Facebook said the attackers had exploited a bug in the site’s “view as” feature, which allows users to to view their own profiles as if they were someone else. The feature was built to give users move control over their privacy.

It appears that my FB account has been compromised. If I did not see this news article, I would have carried on with my life, not knowing the data leakage that has happened for 90 million FB users world wide, out of which I was one.

The magnanimity of data breaches are too complex for ordinary minds to comprehend. The most brilliant minds at FB succumbs to attacks like this time to time. Yet under the radar there are cyber attacks on a daily basis, if not every minute. Most of them are averted.

The convenience of reaching out to your friends online comes at a cost. Only when we are faced with these kind of a breach, we realise how much we are connected and how much we have taken that luxury for granted.